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Thu, 07 Feb 2008

New Blogging Tool


I'm trying out some new blogging software: http://kc0dxf.net/blog, come check it out.

[/sysadmin]     0 comments     permalink

Yes, I'm Here


Had a little trouble this week as you may have noticed. My DSL connection frequently is interrupted when there is a storm and this week's weather tantrums were no exception. Well, except that I was offline for a while and when I got things sorted out, it seems that ATT had decided to change my IP. This required a little bit of configuring to get my email and web server back in action. All is well now.

What's that you say, something about voting in Super Tuesday? Well, yes I voted. First time I have ever voted in a primary actually. Who did I vote for? The winner of course!

[/misc]     0 comments     permalink

Sat, 02 Feb 2008

Prime Example of why you should vote for Ron Paul



If you can find a politician who is running for president that will be honest and frank with the chairman of the Federal Reserve like Ron Paul is here, than for sure, go vote for them.

[/politics]     5 comments     permalink

Wed, 30 Jan 2008

New PCA School Video



Here's a new video of my son's school. It gives an excellent over view of classical education from some of the staff.

[/family]     0 comments     permalink

Fri, 25 Jan 2008

Fighting Colds


It's been very cold here the past couple of weeks and I am hearing reports of people getting colds and flu. So what do you do to fight these? I've talked about this in the past but I will repeat my method again in hopes that more of my readers will try this.

I woke up Tuesday morning with a dry and slightly sore throat. I immediately gargled with warm saline water. When I start to get a cold, this is one thing that I do a couple times a day. One of my wife's Filipino friends who is a doctor told me about this. It does seem to help with upper respiratory viruses. As the day wen on Tuesday, I could sense that something was coming on. So I started taking more vitamin C. I mean like 2 to 4 grams an hour. I might take a gram or two every 20 minutes. I noticed Tuesday afternoon as I started taking more that I was tolerating well. That is to say, I was not passing gas or feeling any rumbling in my stomach. This means something is going on. The vit C is fighting free radicals caused by a virus.

When I got home, I took some niacin. 300 mg in a no-flush time release capsule. Gargle again with warm saline before bed and try to go to sleep early. I woke up around 4 am feeling a bit sick. Don't let up at this point. Since I was up, I hit it with more vit C and warm saline water. I was able to get back to sleep after a while and when I woke up, I felt a little better. The cold was mostly in my head. I had a little congestion but the vit C has an antihistamine effect and I could still breath through my nose through all this time.

I went to work but made sure I had enough vit C to take throughout the day. I also took another niacin tablet to take in the afternoon. I was feeling a bit tired but I still had enough energy to work through the day. In fact, I first thought I might go home early but there was plenty of work to do and I felt well enough to make through to 5.

It was now Wednesday evening and I felt things were on the up. I suspected the cold would begin to migrate to my chest as these things typically do. But I was optimistic that I had it under control and would be well by the weekend. I still kept up the same routine. Letting up slightly on the amount of vit C as Thursday afternoon came around.

It's now Friday morning and I am almost recovered. There is slight congestion in my nasal cavity and very slight coughing left over but I should be in near perfect shape by tomorrow.

Yes, this approach takes a bit of work. Compared to taking a 24 hour cold pill, you have to take vitamin C frequently throughout the day. But the energy level is quite different. There is no antihistamine haze. That dull, loss of energy, sleepy feel that you get from cold medication is completely absent. In fact, I have lots of energy with just some congestion to contend with. Also notice that this particular virus is shortened quite a bit (maybe a subjective observation but I've seen this frequently enough to say it's true for me).

How about you? If you would like to try this method, the first thing to do is start taking more vit C, even when you are well. I would start with a gram with breakfast and dinner. Start adding more if you wish. At the first appearance of cold symptoms, try a gram an hour and see how it goes from there.

One more thing is to take vitamin D in the winter. I ran out of my vitamin D supplements last week. Normally I take 2000 IU per day. I had not ordered more to arrive in time so this could have contributed to my catching a virus. I would also take more vit D if I catch something.

[/health/disease]     4 comments     permalink

Wed, 23 Jan 2008

A Strange Beast: The 18th Century Baryton


Quick, what instrument did Franz Joseph Haydn write over 100 compositions for which is no longer played (or at least, rarely played)? Answer: A strange hybrid instrument called a Baryton. So why did he write for it? His boss, Prince Esterhazy happened to have one and seems to have really enjoyed it. Here is a fascinating video of a guy who has taken the time to learn how to play one.


[/music]     2 comments     permalink

Fri, 18 Jan 2008

Training Circuits


I'm not preparing for cycling in the spring so I have not been riding the trainer at all this winter. But what I have been doing is more of an all around routine of repeated circuits for general fitness and conditioning. Here's one circuit:
  • 8 squats. These are body weight done fairly quickly. Might bump these up to 10 soon.
  • 5 push ups. Done fairly quickly.
  • 15 jumping jacks. Foot work and a little aerobic space in the circuit is good.
  • 4 modified curls. This is a form of ab curl. raise your back off the floor a couple of inches and hold for about 4 seconds.
  • 2 side bridges (2 on left, 2 on right that is). Hold for 10 seconds.
  • 15 seated rows using blue resistance band. Pull back to sides of chest quickly, release slowly.

Repeat this circuit 4 to 6 times. I will try to get in 4 to 5 of these workouts per week. As the temperature warms up I will do more running at lunch and add bicycle commuting. My primary goal this year will be to do a 5k under 22 minutes.

[/training]     2 comments     permalink

Thu, 17 Jan 2008

Ron Paul on Health Care


As I mentioned before, it's in the area of health that I first became aware of Ron Paul. Yet, his thoughts on how government is ruining health care has not been prominent in the campaign up to this point. I just found this lecture that he gave to the World Health organization.


Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

[/politics]     0 comments     permalink

Wed, 16 Jan 2008

Calcium Supplements Questioned.


This study suggests problems with calcium supplements in that they could be a factor in heart disease. The question raised by Cordain regarding acid/base balance is that even with supplements, the problems with bone health are not solved. This study is perhaps another confirmation that there is more to maintaining bone health than just calcium intake (since the calcium doesn't seem to be going to the bones but in the arteries).

And notice the irony of the natural food store banner in the photo accompanying the Yahoo News article. Calcium is one of the few supplements that doctors frequently suggest that older people should take! So it's not really in the realm of an alternative therapy.

[/health/disease]     0 comments     permalink

Mon, 14 Jan 2008

Blowback



[/politics]     1 comment     permalink

Sun, 13 Jan 2008

Why Ron Paul?


Some of you probably see me as a staunch conservative Bush supporter. It is true that I voted for Bush in both 2000 and 2004. When it comes to social issues I am quite pleased with what President Bush has accomplished. This is mostly due to the Supreme Court nominations which have turned the court into a strict constructionist court in terms of it's views of the constitution. But in many other areas I think it is fair to say that Bush has been a disappointment.

Consider foreign policy for example. I have always thought that the concept of a pre-emptive strike in order to defend ourselves was in theory justifiable. But still I have felt reservations about the war in Iraq. The question which always surfaces in my mind is one of cost. Cost in lives and money. Is the action worth this cost? I haven't come up with a positive answer to this even after several years if the conflict and the surge in troops implemented recently. There is also the question of purpose in Iraq. Are we there to defend ourselves or to Nation Build? Nation building in the name of democracy is certainly a positive idea but the question of cost in this is also a highly worthy question as well. How much are we willing to pay in lives and financially to accomplish this? Again, I am not coming up with a highly affirmative answer. But on the other hand, the liberal side has seemed overly pacifist and lacking in understanding the importance of religious world view as it relates to the world of Islam.

I have been aware of Ron Paul for a couple of years now. Mostly his work in defending dietary supplements has been most encouraging to those of us who take supplements. But as this election process has starting winding up, I have increasingly started reading and listening to Ron Paul's ideas in other areas. I think Ron Paul's ideas on foreign policy are misunderstood by my conservative friends. His main thrust as I understand it is to emphasize making war in a constitutional manner. That is, getting a declaration of war from the congress. Consider if we had a declaration of war against Iraq for the purpose of deposing Sadam Husan and establishing a democracy. If such a declaration were made and passed by congress, the military would have a full mandate from the American people to prosecute such a war to the fullest. It would be over quickly and done. So that's the main thing that resonates with me. Let's real in these actions initiated by presidents and get back to the way our constitution was designed. I encourage all my readers to consider voting for Ron Paul in the upcoming primaries.

[/politics]     0 comments     permalink

Mon, 07 Jan 2008

Legos Now Supporting Ron Paul?



[/politics]     0 comments     permalink

Wed, 02 Jan 2008

Chanting the Psalms


We just finished a quarter in the adult Sunday School class at church which was about the use of the Psalms in worship. A couple of points made in class were that the Psalms were for singing. They are the inspired hymnal of the church. There are actually musical indications which are part of the inspired text.

But of course, we have no idea of what this music sounded like or how the text of the Psalms was set to music. The obvious conclusion from this is that God simply did not regard the form or style of music as important. But that they are meant for music is perhaps much more important than most churches think today. So the next question is how do we go about setting the text of the Psalm to music today?

Part of this question involves the importance of being faithful to the text. Because when you try to put the Psalms to a metered style of music (with a strict time signature), you immediately have trouble. So many composers alter the text and paraphrase it. Or just use fragments of a Psalm. Now this can be good and useful but there is still the need to set complete Psalms in exact wording to music.

One way to do this is to use chant. This may not sound very appealing to many of my church going friends but don't dismiss it without good consideration.

One of the resources in our class was a book published by Concordia Publishing here in St. Louis, Reading the Psalms with Luther. This book primarily provides some good insights into the meaning and purpose of each Psalm. But it also has these 8 chant (listed below) tones and each Psalm is pointed in a manner that allows you to chant each Psalm using one of the tones. These tones are fairly simple. And since there are no suggestions as to which tone will go with any particular Psalm, I decided to try and help with selecting a tone by giving a brief analysis. Thanks also to my interest in the Lilypond music typesetting program, I am able to share my thoughts and the tones with everyone. I have highlighted words and phrases so you can quickly determine the character of each tone. So by printing this out and going through the Luther's book, you can hopefully more easily determine which tone might work for a particular Psalm. Without the book it's a little more tricky as it adds the points where you change from the sustained tones. I suppose you could try to do this yourself but for the novice, this might be difficult.

[image of music]

This tone is in D major. Both halves seem to clearly establish the D major chord. It is resolved and does not exhibit any tension when I hear it. Good for expressing absolutes.

[image of music]

This tone has the F major key signature and repeats the note F but to me, it does not sound completely major. The first half actually seems to outline the dissonant locrian mode and, although it doesn't include the diminished 5th (which would be B flat), it still sounds minor. The second half of the tone ends on F and seems to have a more major and resolving sound. This is an interesting tone and could be used effectively in an antiphonal style with a couple of groups of singers. It seems to have a question and answer character to it.

[image of music]

This tone seems to be in the phyrigian mode which is minor but it doesn't sound very minor to me. It is perhaps semi-reflective in character.

[image of music]

E flat major and another tone which outlines the tonic chord of the key. A very resolved and finished sound, it seems useful to me for expressing absolutes and praise.

[image of music]

G major. But this tone clearly moves from G to D, thus ending on more of a mixolydian or dominant chord type of sound. So it is a major tone which does not have the fully resolved sound of the others. It has more of a questioning feel.

[image of music]

D major key but another phyrgian mode tone (which is minor), this time built on F sharp. Yet it doesn't sound overly minor or sad. It is kind of in between reflective and declarative in it's possible use.

[image of music]

F major key but clearly the minor sounding dorian mode (built on G). Lonely and reflective sounding.

[image of music]

A minor. But it seems to shift from A minor in the first half to D dorian in the second. This tone has a kind of anguished and lonely feel to me.

[/music]     10 comments     permalink

Converting Old LPs to Digital Form



What a great gift this was. The Numark TTUSB is not just a turntable. It actually includes a USB connection which will output the audio signal from the stylus to a computer. The included software, Audacity, is actually available freely at the project web site. It is Free Software licensed under the GPL. This software is most excellent and actually includes a pop and click filter (as well as many other sound modifying things) so you can reduce some of the inherent noise of those old LPs after you record them. Once recorded, you can then convert them to MP3, Ogg, or the lossless formats like WMA. I have already digitized a couple of my old records but I have many more that I would like to convert. Most of these records I have not listened to for years and it is really refreshing to hear them once again.

Update

Here's a few more detailed notes on how TTUSB works with the Audacity software. I have digitized a couple of records now and it has been an easy process. As far as getting a good level, this was not a factor as Audacity seems to get a decent recording level automatically. The sample is initially stored in Audacity's native format. From here you can now begin touching up the audio sample. Audacity will display the whole sample in a graphic format that you can visually inspect. Almost all pop's and scratches are visible and look obviously different from the audio of the actual performance. You can use the selection and zoom tools to inspect these. There are two plugins that I have been using so far to touch up the recordings. The pop filter has threshold and width settings and fiddling with these has given some good results.

Sometimes, there are other types of vinyl artifacts that the pop filter will not get. There is a repair plugin that works quite well on these. You have to use the zoom tool and isolate the artifact very precisely. The repair plugin seems to use some kind of interpolation to smooth out the wave form in between the end points. So far, this tool works excellently and I have been able to eliminate some hiss and scratch type things from the recordings.

As far as selecting tracks, I am doing this visually. I check the time of a track and scroll through the display to find it. Then select the whole track. I don't see any kind of automated way to do this but I actually haven't looked very closely to see if there is. Perhaps because I am picky enough that I want to do it all precisely with my own eyes and ears. There is an export selection item on the file menu that allows you to save to whatever format you desire. I have been saving to WMA which I can then convert to Ogg or MP3 at a later time.

Many of the recordings I have are not re-released on CD so I don't think there is any information available from CDDB. But I haven't really looked into this. I don't see anything within Audacity in this regard.

As you can imagine, there can be a significant amount of time involved with selecting and refining all the tracks from an LP. This can depend on several factors. How picky you want to be with eliminating noise, pops, and hiss as well as what kind of shape the recordings are on are the most obvious factors.

[/music]     3 comments     permalink


         

 

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